DEVELOPMENT: Food Crisis Symptom of Dubious Liberalisation

The high food prices that have sparked riots in many parts of the developing world - from Indonesia, India and Bangladesh to Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire and Haiti - should come as no surprise. These are only the latest in a series of events many developing countries have suffered as a result of opening their borders and neglecting domestic agriculture.

DEVELOPMENT: Food Crisis Linked to Doha Deal

The issue of rising food prices was raised at the WTO's General Council meeting Wednesday, and for the first time, discussed in some detail. But there remains, as one African delegate put it, "a lot of confusion about the rising prices of commodities and the Doha Round. Somebody needs to demystify the links. The D-G (Director-General) is using this as a bait to catch us on concluding the Round as soon as possible."

MALAYSIA: Food Futures Behind Rising Prices

With stock markets and the property sector in the United States weakening, speculative investors are turning to fuels and the food sector as a "safe haven", driving up prices in the process, say some food security activists.

EUROPE: Subsidies Feeding Food Scarcity

European subsidies for agriculture are contributing to rapidly rising food prices and the destruction of small-scale farming in the South, experts say.

INDIA: Futures Trade in Farm Commodities – Wrangle Continues

The reluctance of a high-level committee set up by the Indian government to spell out whether futures trading in agricultural commodities has resulted in an escalation of food prices has revealed deep divisions over the issue.

SRI LANKA: Turning to China, Iran for Funds

Sri Lanka’s government, under pressure over human rights violations, is abandoning support from traditional but rights-sensitive partners like the United States and Europe and turning to countries like China and Iran to finance its infrastructure projects.

EUROPE: Trade Policy Backs Western Firms

The European Union is using trade policy to ensure that western firms enjoy considerable leverage over the economies of poor countries, a new report has alleged.

TRADE: Fair Is Not Easy

From its humble beginnings in the 1950s, the fair trade movement has gone from selling coffee at left-wing political meetings to having whole sections devoted to its fruit and chocolate products in European supermarkets. The last five years have been especially buoyant; after witnessing annual growth rates of up to 40 percent, the sale of fair trade products hit 2 billion euros (3.2 billion dollars) in 2007.

SRI LANKA: Beating Grain Prices With Home Grown Rice

Drastically lowered wheat consumption in this island country - once running close to that of the domestically grown staple rice - has been welcomed by food security experts as the only way to beat the current rise in global grain prices.

DEVELOPMENT-CHINA: Swinging Back to Food Self-Sufficiency

Chinese leaders are confronting spiralling global food prices with a return a long-term policy of self-sufficiency in agriculture. But the country’s urbanisation process is chipping away at arable land and sucking the rural labour force into the cities.

Q&A: &#39India Is Not Competing With Any Country in Africa&#39

As a senior politician associated with the movement against apartheid, it was natural for India’s minister of state for external affairs Anand Sharma to play a key role in the Apr. 7-9 India-Africa Forum Summit.

MEXICO-US: NAFTA Renegotiation – Promise or Mirage?

Trade unions and leftwing activists in Mexico are pleased that both U.S. presidential hopefuls for the Democratic Party have said they will withdraw their country from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) unless the treaty is renegotiated.

COLOMBIA-US: Fight Over Trade Deal Is On

Although the Democratic Party has made it clear that it will oppose the free trade agreement with Colombia, President George W. Bush sent the trade deal Tuesday to the U.S. Congress, which now has 90 working days to vote on it.

RIGHTS-SRI LANKA: War May See EU Duty Concessions Cut

Sri Lanka’s garment industry is worried that the duty free access it enjoys to European markets will soon be cut as a result of alleged human rights violations related to the government’s pursuit of a military solution to a long-standing ethnic conflict.

INDIA: Taking on China in Africa

The world’s two most populous countries, China and India, are now seriously competing with each other to engage resource-rich Africa, thereby imparting a new dimension to South-South relations.

DEVELOPMENT: NGOs Confront EU Over Regional Deals

On his arrival at a Joint Parliamentary Assembly of EU and ACP countries in Slovenian capital Ljubljana this week, EU Development Commissioner Louis Michel was confronted with an array of parliamentarians and civil society activists carrying the message, 'Brussels-made EPAs will not fit ACPs'.

HEALTH: EU Complains Again About Affordable Medicine

The European Union has made a fresh complaint to Thailand over policies aimed at guaranteeing that the poor are not deprived of vital medicines.

DEVELOPMENT: Services Needs Poorly Served

Developing countries say they are unlikely to secure meaningful market access for their short-term contractual and independent services providers in developed countries during the ongoing Doha trade talks.

Q&A: &#39&#39Plan by TNCs to Control Seeds Bound to Fail&#39&#39

An attempt by a handful of developed countries and trans-national corporations (TNCs) to monopolise and control the world's seeds is doomed to failure, says Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher, director-general of Ethiopia's Environment Protection Agency, and a formidable negotiator at biodiversity-related fora.

TRADE-EU: Deals with Africa a ‘PR Disaster’

Trade talks between the European Union and African countries have been a public relations "disaster" for the Brussels bureaucracy, a high-ranking official confessed Feb. 26.

IRAN/UAE: US Efforts to Scuttle Economic Ties Fail

Iran and the United Arab Emirates have begun top level talks to boost economic relations despite efforts by the United States to disrupt trade ties and an unresolved territorial dispute over the three strategic islands of Abu Mousa, the Lesser and the Greater Tunb in the Strait of Hormuz.